What happens when your town or neighbourhood changes and you no longer feel safe or welcome? In this online discussion, we bring together Dr Omar Mohammed and Dr Marc Zimmerman to discuss how greening and improvement initiatives can change the physical environment, the wellbeing, and the safety of a community.

Dr Omar Mohammed will talk about Green Mosul, a tree-planting project run by Mosul Eye in Iraq, which brought communities across Mosul together and helped to overcome divisions caused by decades of violent conflict. Dr Marc Zimmerman will discuss his research on neighbourhood improvement initiatives in legacy cities in the United States, and explain how they can help reduce violent crime and support a sense of belonging to a community.

In a discussion moderated by Dr Nafees Hamid, the pair will explore how these initiatives can promote peace, build trust between communities and local authorities, and reduce violent crime and extremism.

Sign up here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4ByNW4f5REWGTB3nHTcsiw

Presented by the XCEPT research programme, in King's College Department of War Studies, as part of King's Culture's Lost and Found season.

Speakers

Dr Omar Mohammed, renowned historian and voice behind 'Mosul Eye,' is an assistant professor teaching Middle East History, Counter-terrorism, and Cultural Heritage Diplomacy at Sciences Po University. His work, spanning media, academia, and social initiatives, focuses on Mosul's recovery and historical scholarship, particularly conceptual history and Orientalism. Holding a Ph.D. from EHESS, Omar's research explores Mosul's historiography, living in exile in Europe while continuing his advocacy for Mosul's cultural and academic revival.

Dr Marc Zimmerman is the Marshall H. Becker Collegiate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Equity in the School of Public Health, and Co-Director of the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention both at the University of Michigan (UM). He has published over 350 articles and book chapters, and co-edited two books on topics including community violence prevention, firearm injury prevention, school safety, and positive adolescent development. He also led the development of Busy Streets Theory and the Youth Empowerment Solutions after-school violence prevention program.

Dr Nafees Hamid is the Research and Policy Director of the XCEPT project at King’s College London and a Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR). Dr Hamid’s research includes ethnographic interviews, survey studies, social network analysis, and psychology and neuroscience experiments with members of extremist organisations and conspiricist movements including jihadists, white nationalists, QAnon, and others. Dr. Hamid’s publications have appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, and he has provided interviews, presentations and talks to various media outlets.